Hogwarts/Lower Levels

Who's there? Come out, come out, wherever you are. I can see . . .you! What're you after? Bad enough, being stuck in this rat-'ole, knowin' there stuff up there to sup, and eat proper too, 'cos I gotta watch the remains drifting past on the backs of every form o' vermin on God's green Earth.

What did I ever do ta thee? Alreet, I were a Snatcher, but it weren't my fault! I mean, what were me options? Starve, or Snatch? And so I did me bit, but no more. Not enough to be sent to this Hell. An 'ell it's gotta be, 'cos there's nowt less holy than what I've seen of late.

There's that there room wi' all the weird pictures on t'wall, like what them Pharaoh chappies used ta like. Pretty enough, ya'd think, but the ghosts drift through, and some of 'em is blood-suckers, you mark my words. An' I know 'e don't drink blood, but betimes it might be better if that blasted Poltergeist were a vamp - 'cos I've 'ad nowt but grief from 'im everytime I tried to scarper through 'is hall, an' back up into sunlight. What between him an' that Imaginary place, what with its clankin' and groanin', how's a body meant to rest? No light, no grub, no sleep, not proper any of it. I don't, I truly don't deserve this.

I'm not a bad man. Done some bad stuff, but that ain't the same. This is the flamin' realm of the damned, this is. I mean, I've 'eard slitherin' and slinkin', and I'm not talking about some scuttlin' roach - I know a ruddy great snake when I hears one. Not sure I believe me ears fully, mind, 'cos it'd 'ave to be fifty foot of python to scrape as much scale as that every moment it moved. Peeves says it is, called it a Bassy-summat, but I reckon 'e's 'aving me on. He is, right? Coming it, I mean. There can't be . . . .

Even if that Bassy don't get me, me mind'll crack thinkin' 'bout them levers, just sittin' there. An' that there cave, what never seemed to end. Like them faces, a procession of the dead, but not dead enough.